


Didn't I Take Good Care Of You

by plume_bob



Category: Homeland
Genre: Angst, Cheating, F/M, Sexual Content, idek, sort of hopeful ending maybe?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-08
Updated: 2015-11-08
Packaged: 2018-04-30 16:08:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5170067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plume_bob/pseuds/plume_bob
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Did you search the area?”</p>
<p>“Of course I searched the area,” Jonas snaps. “Everything, remember? Everything I could for a man I don’t even know, who clearly is completely fucking in love with you.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Didn't I Take Good Care Of You

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this so quickly and I'm not even sure I like it, or if it's even coherent. But since I haven't posted anything in ages, I thought what the hell, share it anyway.
> 
> Set after Quinn vanishes, continues to a reunion. I didn't even attempt to guess the show's plot.

Quinn’s not here.

He’s not _here_ but Carrie can’t stop eyeing the space she last saw him. The dangling IVs, the shape of him still dented into the mattress, a glass of half-drunk water, and so fucking much of his blood she can taste it.

How can a man walk around with that much blood on the sheets?

He’s probably dead. Carrie’s whole body racks with a shiver, her breath punches out of her in a sharp snap. She hangs on to the bed post with a white-knuckled grip, hand curled around where his waswhen she last touched him—

_Stop_ —God, she can’t stop how her brain supplies the evidence. Quinn’s a stubborn son of a bitch but how far could he have really gotten without collapsing? So he’s either in an ER, where he’ll be found and captured by their enemies, or he’s out in the streets, where he’ll be dead from exposure and blood loss.

All of this; two years—two fucking years not knowing and she gets three days with him before he peaces out all over again.

“He knew I was going to call an ambulance,” Jonas is explaining behind her, keeps on explaining even though Carrie can’t even fucking _look_ at him, just the blood, just the pool of it shining the sheets, dripping over the side, painting this space with Quinn’s final moments.

“He said if someone found him you’d never be free,” Jonas _goes on and on._ The fucking panicky fret of his voice. She doesn’t know if he’s worried about a man who might be dead because he left the room for five minutes or Carrie’s reaction.

“You already said that,” she says quietly. Quiet is too difficult, she’s wound up too bad; Quinn in all her senses, the metallic smell, the burned-in afterimage of his pale face against the pillow. Carrie spins around. “You took your eyes off him! How the fuckdoes a dying man walk out of here without being noticed?”

“I shouldn’t even be here!” Jonas yells back. “He is _not_ my responsibility. I did everything I could to help him but he wouldn’t be helped.”

_You dropped the ball_ , she thinks nastily, and then, _no, no that’s not fair_ , _the ball wasn’t yours to drop._

How was Jonas supposed to keep up with Quinn and his stupid, intractable resolve when Carrie’s the only one who’s ever been able to stay in step.

She tenses everywhere, makes her hands fists and hauls back from this pointlessly consuming anger, a tangible restraint of herself that she’s so rarely had to exercise in the days before these.

“Did you search the area?”

“Of course I searched the area,” Jonas snaps. “Everything, remember? Everything I could for a man I don’t even know, who _clearly_ is completely fucking in love with you.”

Carrie jerks into some kind of motion: reties her hair with fumbling fingers, tries to locate the wig even though there’s a sweat breaking out on her forehead and the last thing she wants to do is put it back on.

“I need to try and track him down.”

Jonas disagrees, grabbing her wrist. “You need to tell me what the hell is going on with him.”

“Jonas—”

“I looked everywhere, if he was around here I would’ve found him.”

“I’m good at finding people.” Two years and she couldn’t find Quinn, but she certainly won’t risk waiting two more. Jonas keeps a hold of her, firm but she could break it if she wanted to, if he didn’t look so deserving of an answer. “Look, I care about Quinn, but it’s not what you think.”

It probably isn’t.

“He is trying to die for you,” Jonas tells her emphatically. “He’s not—he’s not fucking normal.”

Carrie scoffs tightly. “Thanks.”

“You know what I mean. Who the hell is he? Why is he so important?” Jonas is unravelling, verging on begging. “Why are you so important to him? I want to understand.”

_He’s the guy who kidnapped your son,_ she thinks. _Used you to get to me._

“We don’t have time for this!”

“Carrie, please.”

She detaches Jonas’ grip, weird vertigo feeling trying to upend her. All she can smell is Quinn’s blood. She has to get the hell out of this place but he’s pervading; they’ve become each other’s whole support system over just three short days, and Carrie had forgotten how this felt, to fall with total entirety into someone else’s hands, to have them fall into yours.

She could almost smile, with the aggregation of memories stubbornly skimming through her head. Sharing takeout over a surveillance screen; handing each other a million cups of coffee; walking out of a dilapidated factory and into his arms with her wrists torn bloody; his bullet going through her shoulder and his hands holding in her blood in the back of a moving van; standing on top of a homemade explosive begging him not to kill them both; the precise way his face changed before he kissed her for the first and only time.

She’s thinking of him like a dead man, his life flashing before her eyes.

“Quinn’s the only person who’s had my back the whole nine yards and wanted nothing for it.” She can’t keep talking about him, not like this, to Jonas in this fucking _awful_ yearning voice that sounds a million miles away. “We’ve pulled each other’s asses out of the fire so many time I can’t even remember, okay? Is that enough?”

Jonas shakes his head, pained line of his mouth tight. She’s always been aware of the disconnect between this world and the one they just came crashing out of, but Carrie hadn’t realized just how parallel they ran until now; now that any and all words feel too weak to explain it.

Jonas goes to the mat for his clients every time, is brilliant and compassionate at what he does, but he’s numb to this.

“It’s just another thing that I’ll never understand because I never lived your fucking insane life,” he says bluntly.

Maybe it’s meant to cut her, Carrie doesn’t know, but the defeated set of his shoulders, the way he’s put her relationship with Quinn on trial—

She doesn’t have time for this bullshit, they’ve wasted enough.

“Then why don’t you just fucking leave? Leave like he did, like everyone else did.” Carrie shoves past him, scoops up the wig, her bag, and fixes herself up sloppily. “I don’t need your help anymore.” She swings open the steel door. “Feel free to go, I won’t judge you.”

She’s given too much away; Jonas stands by her, shocked and—and sad, fuck, it’s the last thing she wants to see.

“Is that what this is?” he asks quietly. “Your soldier finally came home?”

“He was never mine,” Carrie says flatly. It’s a lie, such a fucking blatant lie but, somehow, she can almost reconcile it without wanting to throw up. “I have to go. I think—I need you to go and be somewhere safe. Please.”

He kisses her goodbye and it’s an awful, trembling thing, and they walk side by side to the end of the parking lot, parting without a word.

 

~

 

Astrid’s less than pleased. Saul’s a resentful, paranoid mess. Jonas is so wary of her and when Quinn finally calls—

Carrie can’t talk without stuttering. “You fucking—where the hell are you?”

“I’m alright, I’ll come to you.”

She gives him the address for Otto’s place and he hangs up before she can curse him out some more.

Carrie waves Jonas and Otto away, telling them, “I need to talk to him by myself first,” and then she heads down the hall, taking the front door locks apart with trembling hands.

She inches open the door and waits and when she finally sees him, walking stiffly down the driveway in clothes that aren’t his—a hoodie that’s a bit too big and makes him look more sick than he seems—Carrie can’t organize her thoughts, piling up and vying for space.

She waves. “Quick, get in here.” And Quinn hurries the rest of the way, slipping inside. He’s pale in the early evening light. Carrie inhales him, trying to sense out any sign of captivity, of hospitals, of blood, but he smells clean and laundered, all healed up.

“Look,” he starts. Carrie stares up at him and for a second, he mouths wordlessly. “We don’t have time to—”

“Fine,” she snaps. “This way.”

She takes him into Otto’s study, far enough away from the kitchen where she left Jonas and Otto that if a fight breaks out, it might just stay private.

Quinn runs her through his miraculous rescue and the info on his generous new acquaintances with on-the-job detachment and Carrie’s as enthralled as she is hollow, broken pieces of Quinn’s sudden flight hardly put back together when there is so much more to it than just the details. Outside the sun’s setting, sanguine reds and pinks through the huge windows. Quinn’s less pale in this light, viewed from the careful distance Carrie’s keeping. He almost looks like just any man.

“So,” she starts, and there’s a knock at the door.

Quinn flinches.

“Carrie?”

“Jonas, come in.”

He does. He gives Quinn a sharp look up and down, eyes wide to betray his surprise at the sight of him still living. Jonas looks at Quinn like he’s not entirely human, like he’s some dangerous, indeterminable _other_ and Carrie can’t exactly blame him, even if it does rub her the wrong way.

“Otto wants to speak to you both,” he says, eyes still on Quinn.

Carrie touches his arm. She could go, she _should_. Usher Quinn into the kitchen, tell the redacted story to Otto and Jonas, cook up a plan, ways and means to keep safe, communication; a mission room right there where Otto eats his breakfast. It’d be so damn easy to pretend her chest didn’t feel like a writhing bag of snakes.

Quinn waits her out. He’s gritting his teeth; she can see his jaw tic. He’s leaning against the edge of the desk, hunched and framed in sunset. The soldier who keeps on coming home—no, not home; he has no home. Back to Carrie, somehow. All these conspiring fates.

She tells Jonas, “We still need a minute.”

Finally, Jonas looks at her, and the tension hangs like a curtain, like a verdict in court. Flatly, he says, “Sure you do,” and leaves, slamming the door.

Carrie rakes a hand through her hair. She could go after him. She could do a lot of things.

“Boyfriend trouble?” Quinn asks dryly, and she rounds on him.

Of all the things that might come out of her mouth, she ends up demanding, “Let me see your side.”

Quinn folds his arms. “I’m fine, Carrie.”

“You’re fine,” she scoffs.

Since he got shot, she hasn’t been able to keep her damn hands off him, and what’s pissing her off is something so much pettier than anger; it’s withdrawal. The barometer of Quinn’s wellbeing has become tied to his skin under her palms and Carrie can’t believe him until she _knows_. This: standing here, pretending they’re not— _fuck_ , she can’t do it, she can’t even endure it.

“Tell me you got to Saul,” Quinn says, such an easy distraction, and Carrie thinks about taking it but knows she can’t.

She feels her lip tremble. “Course I fucking got to Saul.”

“ _Carrie_ —”

“I thought you were dead. So, maybe don’t _Carrie_ me.” She laughs, suddenly. “And it’s not the first time, or even the second.”

“Your guy was gonna call an ambulance, you know we’d both be fucked right now if he had.”

“I never asked you to die for me.”

“You don’t have to!” he snaps, energized suddenly, and Carrie’s breath shudders hard, hanging in her chest.

She takes a step forward, and then another. “You disappear one more time, Quinn, and I’m not looking for you.”

He tips his head down and earnestly decimates her. “It’d be so much easier if I could believe that.”

Quinn fucking _pre-emptively_ shifts to accommodate her, legs apart for Carrie to stagger between. He’s shorter leant against the desk, and she buries her face against his throat, arms around his shoulders.

“Don’t fucking test me.”

She thinks she might be hurting him but he wraps her up all the same, presses her against every bruised and bloodied inch of him. He squeezes too hard and his stubble is scratchy against her cheek; he’s entirely flawed in her arms and he’s the walking dead and he’s a Goddamn ghost. Peter Quinn, the lunatic trying to die for her, running away at every opportunity he fucking gets and never, ever loving her less.

Carrie had him, alright. Quinn’s all hers, he’s just a fucking contrary asshole about it.

She folds forwards, pressing her forehead into the middle of his chest. Evening’s starting to fall, the darkness quick and eating them up like a silvery tide.

Quinn’s hands curl around her arms, rubbing slowly up to her shoulders and back down. With her rapidly collapsing composure, she slips her own hand under his clothes, the hoody and the shirt underneath, until she feels the warm skin of his hip. He tenses, breath held, but he doesn’t stop her so she gathers up the material until she can see the bright white bandage covering the gunshot wound.

“No blood,” she says into his chest. She spreads her hands on his body— _finally_. It’s like a scratched itch, a hit of something necessary.

Quinn cups the back of her neck. “Guy knew what he was doing.”

She curls her fingers around his sides and he makes a noise, a _good_ noise, tipping his head against hers, nuzzling across her hairline. He’s solid and smooth, such a sweet curve to his spine. He’s everything he shouldn’t be like this, pliable for days, so appealing, so eager for her touch.

“You’re still warm,” Carrie tells him.

“Is that what you’re doing? Checking my temperature?”

“I gotta be sure.”

Feels like if she stops touching him she might cease to exist, nothing but white noise and drugging stupor where her thought processes used to live. She spreads a hand wide over his ribs, feels the shallow dip of his breath. His heart is a mile a minute. She’s got every one of Quinn’s responses trapped in the palms of her hands.

“I guess you are fine,” she says—slurs; she sounds drunk. “I’ll stop.”

Quinn’s fingers sinks in her hair and his lips press against her forehead, her temple, following the curve of her cheekbone down. He angles her, tips up her face, mouthing a soft line to her jaw. Carrie holds his hips, hot bare skin under her hands, and aches so bad it feels like a punch.

He doesn’t kiss her.

He does, however, get hard against Carrie’s stomach, and the rush of raw heat between her legs almost cripples her. She arches into him, can’t fucking help herself, grips his hair to hold his mouth to her throat and grinds her hips against him for any kind of friction.

Quinn’s hand finds the bottom of her back, huge and demanding under her shirt, dragging her in and keeping her there, rocking them together. He makes a muffled noise into her neck that sounds a bit like her name but broken, and they’re past any kind of stopping point now; fucking but not actually fucking, wrong with barely enough plausible denial to maybe survive it.

Carrie feels mindless, rolling her hips in the tight confine of space he’s made. It’s not enough; she breathes, “Quinn,” and he quickly obliges her, grips under her thigh and pulls her leg over his, keeping his hold on her like a vice. She grinds down, arches against him, and, fuck, she’s gonna lose it any second now because all this pent up tension, all this fear and not knowing and Goddamn nostalgic what-if, has to go somewhere.

He shudders against her hip bone, clutching the bottom of her back so hard she might snap in two. The noise he makes when he comes is staggering, a hot breathless moan right into her ear, and Carrie jerks against his thigh and starts to fall apart.

He’s with her so quickly, pulling away just a few inches. He holds the back of her neck and cups his hand over her mouth like he _knows_ , and when she comes, it’s Quinn’s forehead against hers, too much dizzying eye contact, Carrie’s groan stifled into the palm of his hand.

She sags against his shoulder and feels like she’s gone deaf, sound of their breathing rushing back in as she comes down to earth. Quinn pets her hair and she can feel him shaking his head, sighing, and suddenly it’s fucking surreal, weird trance-like hold snapped like a stretched band.

She can’t seem to get off his leg.

“Quinn?”

“Yeah, Carrie.”

That’s something.

“Not how I pictured it,” she says, no idea why but it seems to bring her back a little, make him snort.

“We gotta—”

“I know.”

“Probably should stop picturing it,” Quinn says quietly, finally detangling them. He doesn’t look at her, and Carrie only looks at him briefly; God, what a fucking wreck he looks. It’s so obvious what they’ve done. Plausible deniability; what was she thinking?

Carrie straightens out her shirt, runs her hands through her hair. “There’s a bathroom a few doors down.”

Quinn huffs. “Thanks.”

The entire thing might’ve lasted ten minutes at best but Carrie feels like a million longing years have passed, a whole yawning ocean of time and circumstance. Quinn heads for the door and Carrie reaches out with a sudden silent desperation, never touching as he trails away from the end of her fingertips.

No, it won’t do.

“ _Quinn_.”

He turns in the open doorway. “There’s a war, Carrie.” It’s a pre-emptive strike; he’s had this rehearsed, the bastard. “I’m a soldier.”

“There’s always gonna be a war.”

“Yeah.”

She doesn’t know what she expected, maybe nothing, but it’s bullshit all the same. “I was coming back for you, to say yes.”

That ocean spans the past, too, and she can see it all, a sea of possibilities that Quinn is so damn blind and stubborn to. Afraid of, maybe.

His mouth turns down. “Doesn’t matter now.”

“You said that already.” She waits, arms folded over her chest which feels all too suddenly exposed. “I’m not an idiot. You really think I buy that?”

Jonas and Otto are up the hall waiting. There’s a fork in the road here and when this all ends, when she and Quinn are finally safe, they’ll have to attend to it.

Carrie walks to the doorway, to Quinn’s figure rooted there, and she stands close but doesn’t touch him, not this time. “It fucking matters.”

He tips his head down with a faint, wry smile. “It’d be easier if it didn’t.”

She slips around him, out into the hall where the lights are on, exposing them in a way that feels horribly appropriate. Quinn watches her intently, looking for something she can only guess at. Carrie wonders if that’s enough for the man waiting for her in the kitchen to get his heart broken.

She shrugs. “Get used to it.”

Beyond Frannie, it’s harder to mourn the decimation of her stability when Quinn’s so present and alive and on every single wavelength. Getting back to her daughter is stone cold number one, but after that Carrie’s life is back in the air, waiting on the flip of a coin, ready to land where it lands.

“Go get cleaned up,” she tells him. “We got shit to do.”

At that he gives her a sarcastic little salute, and Carrie’s shocked into laughing, smiling after him long after he’s walked away. 


End file.
